November 9 marks the anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the thirtieth anniversary of which falls this year. The fall of the Wall was one of the crucial events of the decisive year of 1989 which marked the beginning of the end of the Cold War, of which the barrier erected by the socialist authorities of East Germany had become the ultimate symbol.

The fall of the Wall opened the way for the dissolution of the system of power built by Stalin’s Soviet Union in Eastern Europe after the Second World War. It accelerated, without being either the starting point or the conclusion, a process already underway, culminating in 1990 and 1991 in German reunification, the transition of Eastern Europe into a system of pluralist democracies and a market economy (accompanied very often by serious imbalances) and, finally, the collapse of the Soviet Union itself. The end of an ageing system like that of communism under the Soviet Union impacted all of Eastern Europe, triggering a domino effect that swept away political regimes that had had mixed fortunes since the Second World War, melting away like snow in the sun whilst the contradictions that had caused the sclerosis burst out into the open.

Economic stagnation, the persistent influence of debts contracted with western financial institutions, the revival of long-repressed movements with values different from that of communism (Solidarnosc in Poland), the collapse of the security apparatus on which the communist bureaucracies were based (as in Romania) or a convergence of these factors, in the decisive year of 1989, shattered Soviet Europe. It formally ended two years later when the military and strategic alliance of the Warsaw Pact was officially wound up. But it was shaken to its foundations in the year of the fall of the Wall, when Europe saw the removal of its most visible geopolitical fault line and material. And it was the year that, as a result of a historical counter-step, ushered in the process of the marginalisation of Europe – which bipolarism had made into a strategically important appendage after the suicide of the world wars – in the world order of the decades to come.

It all started in Poland

The break-up of Soviet Europe began in Poland. The most important country, together with East Germany, in Moscow’s architecture in Eastern Europe. Struck between 1988 and 1989 by a wave of strikes against the regime headed by General Wojciech Jaruzelski who had come to power at the beginning of the decade to prevent a Soviet invasion after the outbreak of the protest of the Catholic trade union Solidarnosc. Lech Walesa, the leader of Solidarnosc, bolstered by the support of the first Polish Pope in history John Paul II, the strengthening of the Polish Catholic Church as an influence in society, substantial international loans (including from the Italian Socialist Party of Bettino Craxi) and the working-class base lauded by communist propaganda, gradually managed to undermine the regime.

The wave of strikes led to the calling of the first free elections in post-war Poland in June 1989. Walesa’s strategy succeeded months before the fall of the Berlin Wall was even remotely conceivable: in a system that was still particularly rigid, with a number of seats reserved for the hegemonic communist party, Solidarnosc gained 35%, indicating that the changed wind of history was blowing in the opposite direction to that of the national government. Jaruzelski realistically accepted the result and appointed Solidarnosc to lead a non-communist coalition government led by the trade union activist Tadeusz Mazowiecki. The election of Walesa to the presidency the following year would complete the transition.

Hungary pulls down its wall

The movements that energised Poland had reverberations very soon on neighbouring Hungary in which independence drives had already manifested themselves. The future of Hungary began with the recognition of a past that was seared in the memory of the Magyars: the posthumous pardon granted by the authorities to Imre Nagy and the other heroes of the anti-Soviet revolt of 1956. In June 1989 in Budapest, in the centrally located Heroes’ Square Nagy was solemnly commemorated in an event that led, amongst other things, to fame for a young politician who had just returned to the country after the end of a scholarship funded by George Soros: Viktor Orban.

A short time before, the executive led by Miklos Nemeth had opened the door to a series of important concessions: end of the one-party state, free elections involving democratic parties and, in May, the go-ahead for the removal of the almost 250 km long electrical barrier that marked the border with Austria. After the initial intense phase, the transition that led to the transformation of Hungary into a democratic republic in 1990 and 1991 was gradual and without any particular shocks.

The cork of the GDR pops

The move by the Hungarian government had directly involved East Germany led by the secretary/boss of the SED, the Socialist Unity Party, Erich Honecker. In the summer of 1989 tens of thousands of East Germans started travelling to Hungary to take advantage of the border crossing points opened to emigration. The mounting tide of demonstrations led the regime to consider as more than plausible the idea of deploying the army to suppress the protests and the demands for greater openness and transparency in the country.

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The rise in internal tensions in the country led the government of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) to hope for the support of the Soviet army stationed in the country in response to the increasingly large scale and aggressive protests. The orders to close the borders, the increasingly hard line of the Politburo of the SED and the threats of a Tienanmen Square style repression were of no use: when in October 1989 Mikhail Gorbachev visited to celebrate the fortieth anniversary of the GDR, he told East Berlin that Moscow lacked the political strength to support the maintenance of the status quo in its “empire” and openly backed a policy of reform.

The words of Gorbachev were perhaps the most significant event of 1989. In a few days, the General Secretary of the CPSU demolished the political-military architecture that had kept the countries of the Warsaw Pact in the Soviet orbit. Honecker’s political fate was sealed: on 18 October 1989, he was dismissed from the Politburo and replaced by his deputy Egon Krenz, who led the policy of reforms aimed at facilitating the emigration to the west of his fellow citizens. The GDR re-opened its borders and when on November 9 the spokesman of the socialist government gave the green light for direct emigration between East Berlin and West Berlin thousands of citizens of the divided capital crowded together on the Wall built in 1961 and started to physically demolish it to reach the West. The rest is history. A tale that tells of a symbolic rather than a real reunification of Germany where a significant economic and social gap persists between East and West. The wall fell but thirty years later the challenge of integration between the two Germanies is yet to be overcome.

Czechoslovakia and Bulgaria, rapid and smooth transitions

Prague and Sofia were greatly influenced by what had happened in East Germany. The irresistible domino effect of the dissolution of the Eastern European communist regimes reached Czechoslovakia in the second half of 1989. The Civic Forum of the writer and dissident Vaclav Havel intensified the pressure for the release of political prisoners, the end of repression and censorship, and on 17 November 1989, a demonstration in the capital for International Student Day spread like wildfire in a full-blown revolt against the regime. A massive, permanent and incredibly disciplined revolt: the mass demonstrations that involved 800,000 people and delegitimised the communist regime were called the “velvet revolution”.

In less than a month, Czechoslovakian communism evaporated, in parallel with what had been done by the SED in the same few days in late November and early December, and the regime gave up the vanguard role of the Party enshrined in the constitution and the transition began instantaneously. Havel became President, the Civic Forum won the popular vote in 1990 and, in 1993, the republic split, giving rise to the current Czech Republic and Slovakia.

Czechoslovakia was an industrial and productive centre of great importance. Bulgaria was the steering column of the Warsaw Pact, perhaps the only true puppet state bereft of real sovereignty in the Soviet block. Its continued existence was linked to bipolarism and the Cold War and when the most symbolically significant event, the fall of the Wall, took place, the importance of the neutralist proclamation of the Soviets was made plain to Sofia and the veteran Stalinist vassal Todor Zhivkov was dismissed in less than 24 hours. The speed with which the Bulgarian Communist Party acted allowed it to survive until the end of the Cold War. Once it had changed its skin and rejected Marxism-Leninism, the party assumed the name Bulgarian Socialist Party and called the 1990 election and won it.

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The Christmas of Romanian Blood

The case of the Romanian transition was an anomaly in 1989. The country most independent from Moscow, ruled by Nicolae Ceaucescu, had paid for its diplomatic and geopolitical adventurism and excessively imprudent rapprochement with the West with the debt trap. Ceaucescu’s Romania had to resort to tough austerity measures to repay debts contracted with international institutions. Austerity and the rationing of food, gas and other necessities were, according to many analysts, instrumental from 1981 onwards in containing the spread of dissent apart from several industrial and mining strikes.

Ceaucescu’s Romania was a police state closely guarded by the notorious Securitate that was so diligent in doing its repressive work of preventing the emergence of any possible form of dissent. While Ceaucescu’s Romania became the poorest country in the Soviet block and its infant mortality rates reached Third World levels, the dictator and his wife Elena caused a sensation due to their luxurious lifestyle and their progressive estrangement from the rest of the country. The most emblematic example of Ceaucescu’s paranoid desire for self-celebration is the gigantic, cold and grey Palace of Parliament of Bucharest, a white elephant in a Romania devastated by poverty.

Ceaucescu did not understand the need for compromises or changes of direction. When street protests began to multiply in Romania, the dictatorship reacted brutally. The deaths of hundreds stifled the protests that had spread from Transylvania to the capital Bucharest starting on December 17th. This was too much for many of the soldiers and officers of the armed forces who soon began to mutiny and joined the ranks of the regime that wanted to turn away from a confrontation that threatened to cause a devastating civil war. Given the structure of Romanian power, the only realistically possible alternative to Ceaucescu was a conspiracy within the regime. An internal showdown. So it was. On December 21st Ceaucescu incited a crowd of 100,000 people in Bucharest; a few hours later, Defence Minister Vasile Minea was found dead in suspicious circumstances. He had taken his own life after being dismissed for mutiny, the regime claimed. He had been killed for disobeying orders, claimed the newly formed National Salvation Front (NSF) founded by several second-tier members of the apparatus led by Ion Iliescu.

The outcome of the revolt was determined by the deputy Victor Stanculescu. Terrified by the idea of ​​having to choose between two firing squads (that of the rioters or that of the regime), Stanculescu led the revolt of the armed forces. Taking advantage of the situation of chaos to use them against the dictator, who was besieged on 22 and 23 December by protesters crowded around the government buildings of Bucharest. Nicolae and Elena Ceaucescu’s attempt to escape by helicopter failed: on 24 and 25 December 1989 the FSN held a summary trial of the dictator and his wife which ended in their death by firing squad. The Christmas of Romanian blood ended a terrible ten days for the country in which between 600 and 1,000 people lost their lives. The internal coup within the Romanian power apparatus ended in the most atypical manner of the year of the fall of the Wall. The decisive year of 1989: a year at the end of which Europe found itself less divided but at the same time, less central in the world. Once bipolarism had come to an end, the old faults inside the continent would continue to manifest themselves. Far from ending European history, the fall of the Wall put it back on track.

Translation by Dale Owens

L'articolo Europe’s Longest Year proviene da InsideOver.

Thirty years ago, the Berlin Wall that had divided Germany for 28 years fell. In the minds of many Germans, however, the Wall remains an integral part as it continues to symbolise the story of two peoples – to this day.

While the claim may sound egregious, the minds of many West Germans reveal the truth. The basis of this claim? Countless conversations with West German individuals of all generation, ages and intellectual capacity. Full disclaimer: Yes, I am also West German.

When talking amongst each other, i.e. West Germans with West Germans, one quickly agrees: Those over there are different, not like us. And indeed, I too belong to those who claim that they can identify an East German without having to see their address.

For our hypothesises, we tend to present exhibits A, B, C and D: the dialect (an immediate tell), the appearance (atrociously superficial, but still mostly accurate), a notorious proclivity to complain and above all, the worldview.

While the first two points can be attributed to West German arrogance, they are also pretty much irrelevant in daily life. The view of the world, the ideology, however, is an attribute that carries implications for the entire republic. Most recently, this was observed in the East German state elections in Saxony, Brandenburg and Thuringia when apparent right-wing forces – with fascist tendencies – gained a momentum that had not occurred since the time of the Third Reich.

Our reactions to it? We are usually semi-outraged, and rightly so. Nevertheless, within a short period, a certain level of acceptance arises. Not because we appreciate the election results, but because we simply do not expect anything else to occur in the East. After all, the SED’s successor party PDS, which is now called The Left, has been a pillar of East German politics for decades. In 2019, the torch has been passed on to neo-Nazism.

The East has always been open to political extremism. No matter whether it was Communism, Socialism or Nazism, all find a happy constituency in the ‘Neuen Ländern’ (new states). Totalitarian ideologies remain deeply embedded in the East. So much so only 49.2 per cent of East Germans do NOT consider the GDR to have been a ‘Unrechtsstaat’ (unjust state). Needless to say, that most of us realise the degree of unjustness the GDR represented (80.9).

Do not fool yourself with those images and clips of individuals fleeing from the GDR or crying tears of joys the night the border opened. It is only one side of the truth. The other one is that a significant number of individuals felt comfortable in their totalitarian state, which the survey mentioned above, thirty years later, confirms. It is a staggering example of why our mindsets are so opposed. Few things illustrate this better than our respective understanding of the past, present and future.

However, as so often the case, people are inclined to make excuses for circumstances. Here, the excuses are supposed to justify a proclivity towards extremism and revisionist history. We are told East Germans remain deprived, due to a weaker infrastructure, lack of significant companies in the regions and correlating higher unemployment.

Indeed, no company in East Germany is registered at the German stock exchange (DAX), and the Gross Domestic Product in the new states at €356.3 billion is nowhere near €2907 billion the rest of the republic generates.

However, the unemployment rate in the East stands at 6.1 per cent, while the West remains slightly better at 4.6 per cent. In 2011, unemployment in the East reached 12.4 per cent. Thus, it was cut in half within the last eight years, which, by all accounts, is quite remarkable, given the Third World attributes the East likes to claim for itself. Nonetheless, extremism continues to increase. The alleged lack of job offers can never be a justification for the latter. Moreover, here is a contrarian idea: it is 2019, pack your bags and move to a region where suitable work is available.

Mind you; some people do relocate. Unfortunately, these are mainly young and/or talented people, who either start working or, due to the lack of reputable universities outside of Dresden, become students in the West. Less successful, disgruntled individuals stay behind and often feel forgotten by the West.

The latter remains one of the main issues we have always had with the East: the lack of gratitude and appreciation. For almost three decades, West Germans have built the East that was, due to its former rule of socialism, in shambles when the reunification occurred by paying compulsory taxes (‘Solidaritätszuschlag’) and countless stimulus programs. With the result that many places in the East now look more enticing than West German cities.

The older generation of West Germans particularly resents this default setting of self-loathing. You know, those people, who grew up during or soon after totalitarian barbarism caused our whole country to collapse. While people in the GDR were guaranteed work, childcare etc., West Germans were rebuilding their country – without constant complaints.

Even after three decades, we remain two peoples and differ drastically. One of the only assessments both of us will likely agree upon. The nicknames we have given one another are a testimony of it. For the East, we remain ‘Besserwessis’, western-know-it-alls. For us, they have always been ‘Jammerossis’, whining/moaning easterners.

L'articolo A West German Perspective on the Continuous Division Between East and West proviene da InsideOver.

The Berlin Wall was opened on the evening of November 9, 1989. It paved the way, for the collapse of the SED dictatorship as well as the dissolution of the GDR, while at the same time allowing Germany’s reunification. A revisionist theory has manufactured a consensus that credits Gorbachev and civil unrest within the GDR as being the deciding factors. The truth is that the fall of the Berlin Wall would likely never had occurred if it was not for President Ronald Reagan and the foundations he laid out during his quest for peace with the Soviet Union. 

The Hawk

While his domestic objectives were primarily based on ‘Reaganomics’, smaller government and deregulations, in line with a fiscally conservative mindset, his foreign policy demarches, particularly during his first term, were based on military strength, which included increasing the military budget by 40 per cent and the subsequent paradigm shift from détente to roll back.

With the communist threat continuously spreading and the constant pursuit of extending territory and ideology, Reagan realised the significance of conducting a different kind of policy than his predecessors. Moreover, the omnipresent scenario of mutual assured destruction (‘MAD’) between the two superpowers had been one of the main reasons Reagan was extremely eager to find a way to win the Cold War.

This alternative solution came in an unlikely form and remained one of Reagan’s most significant achievements in shaping the outcome of the Cold War. It was the introduction of the Strategic Defense Initiative (‘SDI’) in 1983, a futuristic defence program that would alter the American position significantly. The idea was to make nuclear war impossible. ‘SDI’, a missile defence system, some ground-based, some stationed in space, offered a chance not only to prevent attacks conducted by the Soviet empire but furthermore to put enormous pressure on the Soviet Union. Not without reason did Henry Kissinger once state that the US’ commitment to ‘SDI’ was one of the main reasons for the end of the Cold War.

The impact of the Strategic Defense Initiative did leave the Soviet Union with two rather atrocious alternatives: It would either lead to a US breakthrough and the implementation of ‘SDI’ or consume all Soviet resources during the process of countering the United States’ plans.

Reagan’s ‘SDI’ was a game-changer. For decades, the Soviet Union had gone all-in to maintain its status as a global superpower, which had mainly been based on its nuclear arsenal. ‘SDI’ now threatened to make the weaponry impotent and obsolete with one single scientific invention. A fiasco for the Soviet Union, not only in terms of its ambitions as a superpower but also economically. Suddenly, the Soviets found themselves in a peculiar position and needed to resume arms control talks.

Another crucial element that forced the Soviets to collapse and allowed East Germany to be liberated was the idea that the United States would be able to passively engage against this spread of communism under Soviet influence by supporting anti-communist movements in several parts of the world. Born was the Reagan Doctrine.

It was the antidote for the Brezhnev Doctrine that had worked by the rule of whatever the Soviets got (i.e. territory), they would keep. The Reagan Doctrine aimed to negate this process and simply said: no, you will not.

The modus operandi here was to fund resistance fighters as mentioned above with financial capabilities and political influence with the ultimate aim of forcing the Soviets into an overspending and subsequent collapse of its system. While the United States spent less than one billion a year, the Soviet Union spent about eight billion per anum to overcome the impact the Reagan Doctrine had on communist expansion plans.

The Negotiator

Negotiations with the Soviets had been puzzling over the decades, with Brezhnev, Andropov and Chermenko having one trait in common: an ideology that went back to the second World War and culminated in the distrust against the West. This parochial attitude changed, however, and an opportunity arose when Gorbachev became Reagan’s new interlocutor.

Not only was Gorbachev the product of a different generation, but was more modern, moderate and most importantly, educated. In his approach to persuade the new Soviet leader, Reagan conducted four summits between 1985 and 1989, Reagan’s last year in office. Reagan’s hopes regarding Gorbachev were warranted, and the two leaders concurred on the idea to cut nuclear weapons in half during the Geneva summit of 1985.

However, one needs to take into account the fact that Reagan’s military expenditure – as well as Saudi Arabia, conveniently an ally of the United States, increasing its oil production to the Soviet’s detriment – had undoubtedly had a severe impact on the Soviet Union at this point already with its economy struggling to keep up with the US’.

It would, therefore, be rather ambitious to argue Gorbachev had been open to negotiations out of the goodness of his heart. More had it been out of necessity in order to stop an inevitable downfall based on overextension and the financial pressure Washington had put on Moscow via the arms race and economic embargos.

In October 1986, Gorbachev told party associates: ‘We will be pulled into an arms race that is beyond our capabilities, and we will lose it because we are at the limit of our capabilities. If the new round [of an arms race] begins, the pressures on our economy will be unbelievable’. Only days after his statement, Gorbachev’s proposed – inter alia- a 50% reduction of the nuclear arsenal Reykjavik summit.

His statement, as well as the following actions, reiterate the argument that it had been Reagan and his policies that made the Soviets change their course. Admittedly, it still takes a reasonable person as opposed to a hardliner on the other side of the table. However, Reagan had undoubtedly delivered the incentives.

During their summit in Reykjavik however, Reagan’s counter-proposal was as ambitious as ever. In his determination to end the Cold War and the threat of a nuclear holocaust, he not only proposed to abolish all nuclear weapons but was also willing to share his ‘SDI’ plans with the Soviet Union.

Gorbachev, however, did not believe the willingness of Washington to share ‘Star Wars’. He instead made it clear that the Soviet Union was willing to accept Reagan’s idea of abolishing all nuclear weapons but made Washington’s abolishment of ‘SDI’ his sine qua non.

One can see how close the two superpowers came in an attempt to jointly abolish their nuclear arsenal, guarantee peace and also the impact Reagan had had at this point in history already. Two sides that, only twenty-four years ago had come dramatically close to a nuclear war, were all of a sudden negotiating about abolishing all nuclear weapons and sharing technologies.

Nonetheless, Gorbachev had to convince many people within the Politburo, who did not want to rule out a play by Reagan and a potential first strike from the Atlantic coast. Gorbachev succeeded. Moreover, his policies of Perestroika and Glasnost arguably set the stage for a dissolution of the Soviet Union.

On December 8, 1987, the United States and the Soviet Union signed the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, arguably the last piece of the puzzle – the progress that had started with Reagan’s presidency in 1981- and the initiation of the end of the Cold War as the world had known it.

After Reagan had left office, the Berlin Wall opened ten months later and the Cold War – though unofficially – was declared history on December 3, 1989. The Soviet Union ultimately dissolved in 1991, with Germany being able to reunify its country. While Gorbachev received the Nobel Peace Prize in the early nineties for his contribution during the Cold War, he once said about Reagan, and this is perhaps worth more than any external evaluation: ‘He has already entered history as a man who was instrumental in bringing about the end of the Cold War’.

As such, he remains the man, who laid the foundation for Germany’s reunification and ought to be commended for it by all Germans.

L'articolo Mr Gorbachev, Tear Down This Wall: Reagan’s Influence on the Soviets proviene da InsideOver.

The 9th of November marks the completion of thirty years since that autumn afternoon, when the Berlin communist authorities announced the lifting of travel restrictions for the citizens of the German Democratic Republic, signalling the beginning of the end of the socialist regime a few months later.

Thousands of people flocked in front of the Brandenburg Gate, the most distinctive point of the divided German capital, bursting with excitement in the face of the apparent access restoration to freedom. People’s dreams and hopes for a better life seemed to already come true with the detachment of the first 15-kilometre-long wall’s piece.

One generation afterwards, the first truly free in name and essence, the first without the memories of the socialist ideal, the nightmare of surveillance and the shortages of basic goods, the question about whether the expectations created by the reunification of a nation (and with it of a whole continent) were fully met remains unanswered.

History has repeatedly shown that it disregards any human prediction, let alone when it hastens to prejudge its end. History is a narrative, and that of the present era may not have condemned the socialist past with the uttermost certainty that one would expect three decades ago.

In today’s united Germany of exemplary social and economic planning, the contradictions remain alive: freedom and uncertainty, perspective and inequality, new and old, us and others. The euphoria of reunification was succeeded by the burden of reconstruction, the re-establishment of institutions and nation-wide convergence. Nowhere is this dual character of the present-day German state more characteristically reflected than its vibrant capital, where politics and art, development and poverty, cosmopolitanism and social exclusion compose an extremely dynamic portrait on a canvas of unparalleled cultural diversity.

For contemporary German youth, the notions of socialism, two German states and Stasi are not much more than demonized terms of a seemingly recent but empirically alien and ultimately incomprehensible historical period. For the elders, who have either lived in full or in part the most successful application of real socialism, an unexpected feeling of nostalgia shakes the coveted capitalist dream. Weren’t things finally what we imagined? Did the perpetual human feeling of dissatisfaction or incessant propaganda finally overshadow the self-evident conquests of the era that today seem utopian, such as universal employment, free housing, and education? Have the phenomena of secret surveillance, human rights violations, doping, party favouritism disappeared in our free society? Were we too quick to celebrate the end of illusions?

30 years after the wall fell, an invisible barrier remains between east and west, as large numbers of East Germans feel like second-class citizens. Two million people, mainly youngsters and women, have left the region since reunification in 1990, while the east is still lagging in terms of employment and income. This sense of insecurity and inferiority provides fertile ground for extreme parties, such as the far-right AfD and the far-left Die Linke.

The city of Berlin is fervently preparing for the anniversary celebrations. Among different events, an aquatic light installation will draw borderlines on the Spree River as numerous flashing rescue lamps will be used to symbolize a borderline between Kreuzberg (formerly West Berlin) and Friedrichshain (formerly East Berlin), a bright reminder of a dark past at a time when seemingly forgotten ghosts seem to revive. The message they send is more timely than ever: in man’s struggle for freedom, the greatest enemy is ourselves.

L'articolo 30 Years Since the Fall of the Berlin Wall: A Tainted Legacy proviene da InsideOver.

L'articolo 30 Years Since the Fall of the Berlin Wall: A Tainted Legacy proviene da InsideOver.